


To hold me back when I don’t know how

by sapphire_child



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dark, Episode: s04e16 The Waters of Mars, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-22
Updated: 2009-11-22
Packaged: 2019-01-27 23:26:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12592904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphire_child/pseuds/sapphire_child
Summary: Sometimes he needs someone to tell him when to stop. He’s that sort of man.





	To hold me back when I don’t know how

The guilt was a steel cable rooted deep in his belly, the pain a physical manifestation of the voices he could still hear through the comm in his helmet as they began to die one by one.

Steffi crying, sobbing as she listened to the voices of her loved ones, as she was infected by the vile water, as she became something monstrous and inhuman.

Roman, so young and clever – turned with just one drop. One drop!

He felt the cable tauten with each step, the metal stretching and creaking to a point when surely it would snap and with it, the tenuous control he was barely holding over himself.

And then Ed’s first screams shrieked in his ears and he knew the man was as good as gone as well.

He closed his eyes and stopped for a long moment, the cable in his gut suddenly trembling, _vibrating_ with the strain of being held so taut. It was tensing now, coiling in on itself as if taking root in his soul. Splinters of metal sliced through delicate flesh like shards of glass and he gritted his teeth and was suddenly, terrifyingly and overwhelmingly afraid.

Not of the thing that lurked in the water. No not of that. Nor of what it had made these brave people into. No. This was a fear of what he might do if that cable – already so tight and straining, straining, _straining_ – snapped.

Would he be able to cut himself loose? Run away the way he had for so many years? For once he didn’t think so. He was getting so very tired of running, tired of the loss and the _what if’s_ and the _could’ve beens_ and in all honesty he didn’t think he was going to be able to stop himself if...

The explosion of the shuttle knocked him clear off his feet and he felt the shock of the impact as he landed heavily, face first in the Martian dust. There was chaos for a moment, the world burning around him and then he rolled and took to his feet, a fierce ache in his hearts and a burning in his gut where the cable had cut clean through him.

He looked back to where he had come from and a strange, deadly calm settled over him. The cable had snapped with the force of a gunshot, tearing at him so fiercely that the agony had been replaced instantly by a sensation of complete numbness. It was like a physical blow to the head, a patented Jackie Tyler and Donna Noble slap combined into one and he was more than a little awed by the thoughts, the possibilities that were opening now in his mind like so many brilliant flowers.

Why shouldn’t he save them? Hell, couldn’t he at least try? Look at everything he had done! Surely he could do this? Why should they have to die, these brilliant, amazingly human people? He had sat by and watched, knowing their fate all along and yet he had stayed, perhaps through some sense of morbid curiosity, unable to turn away from the horror of a car crash or a loved one falling out of reach or of a world burning and dying at your own...

And he decided: no. _No_ more. No more no more no _more._

Eyes blazing, he took one determined step forward – the first movement of a sprint that would carry him back to the base and in that instant he felt the tensing of every single muscle in his body, the anticipation of the rush of chemicals to come, the double beat of his racing hearts, the sweetness of the knowledge that he could change this – he could fix this!

He faltered immediately at the feel of a hand on his arm.

Even through two thick layers he could feel the press of individual digits – fingers shorter than his but no less slender – and he knew what it meant, her touch on him and that brief moment of complete elation he had felt slipped right down between his feet to join the pooling length of cable that was even now fraying at the ends.

He turned to her in despair and even through her helmet he could see the tears pouring down her cheeks, glistening red in the burning, in the dying of the light.

She shook her head.

“Please.” he said, voice cracking. “ _Please_. I have to try. Let me try.”

She shook her head again and her hand found his, held it as tight as she could through two layers of thick, thick gloves. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Together they turned away. Together they walked back to the TARDIS and though they both felt the nuclear shockwave, it was the Time Lord who was brought to his knees when they were safely inside.

Gasping, he all but tore his helmet off and the glass in it shattered messily as it hit the grating. She jumped in shock, halfway through the process of taking her own helmet off and looked to where he knelt, gritting his teeth together so hard that it hurt.

“I could’ve saved them!” it started as a whisper and then rose to an anguished shout but she didn’t shy away from him.

Instead she knelt before him and put her gloved hands on his upper arms, behind his neck, drew his trembling form into her arms as he began to sob and then she cradled his head gently – so gently – with hands gloved but no less tender for it.

The mighty Time Lord is nothing but a lonely, frightened child now. Here in the arms of this human woman he is truly humbled. Her touch is enough to ground him, making him no less a God than any other creature to live or love in the whole wide universe – no matter if he has time running through him mind, body and soul.

“I wouldn’t have stopped.” he admitts later when they are in the Vortex, his hands pushed deep into blue pockets. “If you hadn’t been there...if you hadn’t...I wouldn’t have even hesitated.”

“Yeah.” she says, cheeks still stained from her own tears. “That’s what scares me.”


End file.
